


not another inch

by CloudDreamer



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Fire Eater/Magmatic, Hellmouth Sunbeams (Blaseball Team), Hellmouth-Typical Body Horror, Precog Trio, Precognition, Swearing, Teeth Where They Shouldn't Be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:42:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29615166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: Nagomi Nava is not going to let anyone else die.
Relationships: Nagomi Nava & Randall Marijuanna & Emmett Internet, Nagomi Nava & Sandoval Crossing, Nagomi Nava & The Passenger
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	not another inch

Nagomi doesn’t see it coming all at once. There’s no prophecy in rhyming tongues to decipher, no step by step instructions emblazoned in her mind. No shadows before objects preceding motion. That’s not how precognition works. 

This is how precognition works. She is on the field, Passenger shifting its weight as it reaches back, unfurling tentacles out of the void that shouldn’t be able to fit on her face. Red eyes gleam, a mirror of her dark brown one, and the ball is midair. She feels heat rising up inside of her, the same heat she’s felt a thousand times before and never before, and it’s the bottom of the second, Sutton up to bat. The goose swings its heads around, all in different directions, dozens of voices of varying coherency cascading, ringing. 

Light cascades across the field, from the stadium and from the smoldering eyes of the umpire. Nagomi’s heart races in tune with the pulsing of Passenger’s eldritch song, distant, unthinkable, and yet, as familiar as the sun that the moon won’t let shine. They are of one mind. Smoke unfurls, and she knows one thing with utter certainty, down to her bones and in the blood that the Hellmouth has blessed—

_Not today._

_Not again._

_We aren’t letting anyone else die._

And a hand is on Nagomi’s shoulder, firm, as her eye is caught on something before her, something in the distance. But she’s inside, and there’s nothing as far away as she’s looking. No movement, nothing. The only remainder of what she remembers in the wrong order is the taste of smoke.

“—gomi,” Sandoval says, like it’s the end of a sentence. She breathes in, coughs as the smoke is still there. Passenger is wrapped around Sandoval’s arm, tight enough to bruise at best, if it’s not completely cutting off circulation, and she forces it to let go before it breaks bone. 

“Shit,” she says. 

“Past or future?” he asks, and she says future, even though the memory settles into the back of her mind, accessible just like any other game against the Spies. She breathes as Passenger pulls back inside her, lurking with nothing more than eyes, traces of black fluid, and a boundary of teeth outside the void. She reaches up, pushes her hand into its nook, and fishes for something fleshy to rub against. She reaches it, finding heat, and Sandoval winces just a bit, as he always does. 

And this is a piece of the puzzle. It is the present for Nagomi, and in moments, it will be the past. In the moments before, it was the future. There are flash forwards and flash backs, and they both leave her dizzy. She is unanchored.

Time is made of memories. It’s a tapestry of moments, imperceptibly vast, and it can be rewoven in sudden, violent ways. Every life is the intersection between thousands of threads, knots of moments shared with strangers and family and lovers and everything in between. It would be incomplete without all the different times Lars has smiled, all the strength of Sandoval drawing a line in the sand so painfully literally with the sun behind him as the Hellmouth, their home, their safety, their worst enemy, encroached with vicious speed, all the moments Randy spent behind the counter at the Seven Hellevens definitely not doing his job. It would be complete without moments mundane and beautiful and brutal. 

Nagomi can’t see it all. Nobody can, not even the Gods, because to know everything would be to change everything. It would be to set the future in stone, and she knows their future isn’t guaranteed. Nothing is a guarantee, but their future is possible. There is something good in reach, and sometimes, that’s all she needs to know to keep going.

Because if it’s possible to survive, then she _will_. The Sunbeams have given up so fucking much, and she’s not going to give one more inch. The League can have Randall. They can have Emmett. They need heroes— Nagomi believes that with as strong a fury and flame as the umpires burn with— but she’s not going to be their hero. She’s not going to let Sutton, any of Sutton, be one of them. 

The memory is in place as she moves forward, and that’s not the only time she flashes forward to that day. She remembers fire coursing through her veins, smoke rising from her skin as lava pools through the teeth that surround Passenger’s void, and she will swing the bat with everything she has, everything she’s lost, and everything she refuses to let go of. Smoke will billow around her. The election passes, and Fire Eater settles in place. Nagomi’s body trembles with potential energy, memories of the sky rumbling, the Peanut’s descent, and flames licking the field consuming her over and over again. The flame consumes her now, all of the deaths of the past and of the future rippling through her like lightning striking, and it consumes her now so she will never let it consume anyone else, ever again. 

She knows what will happen when she steps onto the field on the first day of the tenth season. 

She smiles. 

Not another inch.


End file.
